SAMUEL L. WILLIAMS.
Graham & Hoag’s Sunday News-Letter arose from the tomb of the Evening Press and the Sunday-News. J. W. Graham, now of the Herald, piloted the trim vessel skillfully. A stock-company of producers, thinking a daily in the family would be “a thing of beauty” and “a joy forever,” bought the News-Letter and the Courier equipment in 1879, to start the Petroleum World. James M. Place, a pusher from Pusherville, had solicited the bulk of the subscriptions to the stock and was entrusted with the management. R. W. Criswell edited the paper splendidly. Captain M. H. Butler, who put heaps of ginger into his spicy effusions, and John P. Zane, whose hobby was finance—both have gone the journey that has no return trip—embellished its columns with thoughtful, digestible brain-food. Oil-news, readable locals, dispatches, jaunty selections and bang-up neatness were never lacking. But competition was fierce and the World had a hard row to hoe. A committee of stockholders soon took charge. Place, sleepless, indomitable and with the energy of a steam-hammer, opened a big store at Richburg and drove a rattling trade. Setting out to paddle his own canoe as a Corry newsboy at ten, he had run a newsroom at Fagundas, a bookstore and the post-office at St. Petersburg, a branch store at Edenburg, large stores at Bradford and Bolivar and won laurels as the greatest newspaper circulator in the petroleum-diggings. At Harrisburg and Reading he swung papers and the Globe in New York. He is now in Washington. S. L. Williams, unexcelled as a sprightly writer, and Hon. George E. Mapes, equally competent in the Legislature and the editorial chair, kept the World booming until “patience ceased to be a virtue” and the daily ceased to be a sheet. About half the material went to the Oil City Blizzard and the rest went to print the Sunday World Frank W. Truesdell had determined to originate. The late Hon. A. N. Perrin, ex-Mayor of Titusville, possessing “ample means and ample generosity,” backed the project. Truesdell finished his trade as printer in Cleveland and worked at Youngstown and Franklin, settling at Titusville in 1880 to manage the World jobbing-room. He was a young man of fine ability and scrupulous integrity. His partnership with Perrin ended in 1887 by his purchase of the entire business. He sold a half-interest in the paper in 1893 and death claimed him in October of 1894. Measured by his thirty-seven years, Frank Willard Truesdell’s life was short; measured by his good deeds, his worthy enterprises, his lofty sentiments and kindly acts, it was longer than that of many who pass the Psalmist’s three-score-and-ten. Mrs. Truesdell and her little daughter live in Titusville. F. F. Murray, associated with Walter Izant and W. R. Herbert in the general details, edits the Sunday World, which is as frisky as a spring-colt. Born at Buffalo in 1860, Murray was reared in Venango county, whither his father was drawn by the oil-excitement. Correspondence for local papers naturally bore him into the journalistic swim. He whooped it up six years for the Blizzard. A regular hummer, he is at home whether flaying monopolists, taking a ruffian’s scalp, praising a pretty girl, writing a tearful obituary, dissecting a suspicious[suspicious] job or reeling off a natty poem. “The Old Tramp-Printer,” a recent effort, is a fair sample of his quality:
“Here’s a rhyme to the old tramp-printer, who as long as he lives will roam,
Whose ‘card’ is his principal treasure and where night overtakes him home;
Whose shoes are run over and twisty, whose garments are shiny and thin,
And who takes a bunk in the basement when the pressman lets him in.
“It is true there are some of the trampers that only the Angel of Death,
When he touches them with his sickle, can cure of the ‘spirituous breath’;
That some by their fellow-trampers are shunned as unwholesome scamps,